To both the CPP—hell bent on restoring and defending the dogma of its original formations—and the TWSC—now a “normal” but vital cog in a huge university organizational structure–the left wing debates of the 1970s were but a speck in their larger histories.
The publication of Revisiting Marxism in the Philippines, an abridged version of the two extremely popular original volumes of Marxism in the Philippines, is therefore an attempt to restore the importance of what brief moment in these parallel narratives. While conditions today are considerably different from when these books were first published, the issues they discuss continue to have strong resonance in the current political economy. They raise topics that were never fully resolved—either theoretically or, as the CPP always insists, in the complex arena of political praxis. Finally, they are also issues that continue to define Philippine political life, some exhibiting considerable potency in today’s world.